Imune: uma viagem pelo sistema de defesa do corpo

Abstract

The immunology is one of the knowledge areas that has a major impact on an individual's life. It is related to health and well-being, caring for yourself and others. This work aimed to develop and apply a board game about immunology topics. This activity was developed in high school classes of a public school from regional 3 in Fortaleza, during the internship promoted by the CAPES University Residency program. To elaborate the game “Immune: a trip through the body's defense system”, a previous research about the immunology contents of the high school textbooks was carried out. The contents were distributed in the textbooks of the three series, but the information, besides being scarce and abstract; it does not have a connection between the three series, or clarifies the importance of studying aspects of human health for citizens. The game was made manually using EVA sheets and contains 30 squares, each of these with three questions. The game application was divided into two moments. In the first, the invitation and the presentation of the game were held, as well as the application of a first analysis questionnaire to verify the students' previous knowledge. In the second, the group was divided into teams to play the game, after the match, the students answered the same questionnaire previously applied. The application was performed separately in the two classes of high school. The questions were multiple choices to facilitate discussion and analysis. The teams should choose an immune system cell that corresponds to a question, whether they are Neutrophil, Macrophage, or Lymphocyte. The questions should be answered within 2 minutes and if the answer was wrong, the team should return to home. The present work made a qualitative analysis of how positive is the use of playful games in the learning of high school students. Before the application of the game, the percentage of hits was between 10 and 76% and then rose to 22.22% and 80%. It was possible to observe different behaviors for the pre- and post-application moments, which can be explained by several factors, such as low school attendance, difficulty in learning certain contents and even deficit in reading ability. Despite these challenges, the game still showed good results, indicating to be a useful tool to improve learning. The activity was well accepted by participating students, with rate of 82.22%. In this context, it is suggested that didactic games may help in immunology teaching, as they contribute to the cognitive development of students and stimulate interaction and cooperative learning.